Consciencebound

Archive for the ‘psychology’ Category

Today I listened to a Radio Lab podcast from WNYC in New York. Quickly becoming one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. The episode that I listened to today is called Vanishing Words and can be listened to here. The gist of this very interesting episode was that a guy is using computer linguistic analysis to study Agatha Christie’s novels. Upon doing this he discovered that over time, Christie’s vocabulary decreased by a significant amount as she got older. There had been some people who thought that she may have suffered from some kind of dementia but it was not clear. This study seemed to lend support to that theory. They also discussed another study where they were able to predict with 85% accuracy whether a person would develop dementia when they got older by looking at their vocabulary and writing style when they were young. Although certainly not conclusive it was very interesting.

So why I am bring this up today? Well, other than the fact that Radio Lab is simply a cool show to listen to that always makes you think, this made me think about something else that I thought was interesting. In keeping in line with my developing skepticism of the Bible and other “authoritative” religious books of the past, it seems that studies like this should give us pause. Often, when trying to figure out who wrote what book in the bible there is a linguistic analysis that is done on the vocabulary of the writings to compare with this persons other attributed writings. There are conclusions that are arrived at about two different people who wrote Isaiah, five possible people who wrote the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible) as well as different theories on Paul’s letters in the new testament. Given some of the ideas discussed in this podcast, it seems reasonable to conclude that the change in vocabulary with some of these different books may be the result of changing mental faculties over the years. Maybe Moses or Isaiah or Paul simply had some form of dementia and this is what made some of their ideas hard to square with other of their ideas. Maybe this is why there seems to be evidence of multiple authors of various biblical books. This of course would only make our job that much harder when it comes to trying to understand ancient authors, but it is definitely something to consider.

A helmet designed to stimulate various parts of the brain which create near death and religious experiences. Pretty interesting…

Excellent Podcast episode of For Good Reason. Cognitive Dissonance is extremely interesting and scary at the same time. We are all so prone to only accepting and believing things that agree with what we already believe and listening to this really makes you consider your reasons for what you believe.

You can listen to this episode here

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This is a story from back in 2004 which I did not see at the time. Someone just forwarded an article to me about it the other day. It is a story about a disgruntled Colorado man who seemed to experience some pretty unfair treatment in his small Colorado town of Granby. His frustration culminated in building a steel and concrete reinforced bull dozer and destroying 15 buildings and many cars and finally by taking his own life. A video montage of this even is below or you can read a story about it which includes a lot more details here and a discovery channel story on it here. What I would like to comment on is this man’s feeling that he was guided by God or some higher power.
I am not trying to single this man and his crazy actions out as a representative example of believers in any way. Although I can sympathize with his frustrations, his actions are hardly condoned especially because his clear intention was to also take a number of people’s lives. I also know that many believers will think that this man is crazy and that God was most certainly not guiding him to do this. What I do think that it illustrates however is the way that humans can be clearly deceived by their own circumstances and by their own beliefs to think that God is on their side and leading or speaking to them and feel that they have clear evidence for this. The man who did this, Marvin Heemeyer, made audio tapes of his plans and his thinking before the event so we have some insight into what he was thinking.

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I have been going through old archives of one of my favorite podcasts, Reasonable Doubts and came aross Episode 21, Miracles with Guest Joe Nickell. The guest Joe Nickell is a paranormal investigator and the hosts discuss with Joe his approach to dealing with claims of the miraculous. They talk about visions, weeking statues, Speaking in tongues and other phenomenon which are said to be the miraculous work of the supernatural.

Miraculous claims abound today just like they did in the ancient world. We want to believe in the supernatural and in miraculous claims. It’s mysterious and exciting and it gives us hope that this natural world is not all that there is. For many, miracles are a proof for their faith, be it in God, Jesus, Astrology, UFO’s, Ghosts or whatever else. The interesting thing is that each group who believes that a miracle is a testament to the truth of their faith or beliefs looks with skepticism on other groups claims of the same thing. And if miracles are to be a proof of anything, it would seem that they are a proof of nothing since so many conflicting belief systems seem to be derived from them.

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